


Girls' Night

by Querulousgawks



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types, Veronica Mars - Fandom
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Series Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5078524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jackie and Veronica run into each other in New York City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girls' Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emtifah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emtifah/gifts).



> An extremely belated gift for emtifah, who won the contest over at VM Fic Recs in August and prompted platonic Veronica x Jackie. All the apologies for its lateness, and all the thanks for this awesome prompt.  
> Betaed by the vigilant MimiLaRue, forever gently unsnarling sentences and fixing in-dialogue punctuation. She is the best. All mistakes are my own.

_Veronica Mars, terror of Neptune High._ Three schools and a hundred grand of Sallie Mae's finest later and here she was, wearing a name tag and serving coffee. Her dad's corporate executive plan never seemed more exacting--or exhausting--than on her school-break food service stints. Veronica kept her back to the counter as she labeled one cup for a peppermint latte, poured a blessedly simple drip order in another, and called out to the next customer. "Can I get something started for you?"

"I was going to ask for a macchiato, but --"

The voice was lower than Veronica remembered, not without an edge of nerves but easier, somehow, than she'd ever heard it before. Still, she knew it, and she found herself grinning as she turned around.

"--I can't remember if it's in your bag of tricks," Jackie finished, smiling back. She was the last person in a line that had formed 45 minutes ago; Veronica let herself sag against the counter, enjoy the lower-key surprise of a long-lost frenemy she _hadn't_ dated.

It was almost comforting. Maybe Carrie Bishop and Gia Good...man? win? would show up, and they'd have a girls’ night. Paint their nails, make snide remarks, get drunk and plot someone's downfall...Veronica shook her head. She'd never been a joiner. A partner in crime was more her style, and besides, that wasn't her life anymore.

A clatter at the back door--the ever-stoned Jonah arriving for his shift--shook her out of the memories, and she replayed Jackie's last remark. Surprisingly mild, for a women who looked, even on a Saturday afternoon, every inch the boardroom shark Veronica's law school classmates aspired to be. Fine gauge pinstripes and heels that clicked authority, mixed with that easy, almost fond expression? _Suspicious_.

...Or she was just still paranoid. "Don't tell me you've gone soft, Cook."

"Nobody loosens up after _leaving_ California, Mars. Except maybe you."

In anyone else that would be a dismissal, a door open and promptly shut on this little blast from the past. But teenage Jackie Cook, Veronica thought (helplessly - she'd never really been able to silence the internal Marlowe narration, even years out of the biz), had strolled out from a life behind a diner counter and into the Neptune Grande with hardly anyone connecting the dots between the two - she'd never been one to drop her walls on first contact. The trick had always been to look for cracks instead, hear the question marks on offer in those declarative sentences. _Except maybe you_?

"That's probably the direction I should have gone in." _Yeah, I was a bitch._ "But law school has other ideas." _Don't worry, I haven't changed._  

Jackie nodded once, sharply, as if to say she approved, and rattled off a fifteen-syllable coffee order. Veronica rolled her eyes and made it with flair, then got herself a cup of normal goddamn drip and went on break. They had a lot to catch up on.

****

"So..." Veronica waved a hand, trying to indicate Jackie's... _everything_ without coming off insecure about her own dingy-polo-and-apron ensemble. "You've obviously gotten a few years ahead on the corporate executive plan. Where are you climbing towards partnership -Truman Mann? Wolfram and Hart? Dewey Cheatem and Howe?"

Jackie snorted inelegantly, which was its own relief. "You're projecting, Veronica. Cooper Jennings - and I'm branching out, not climbing." She paused, took in the famous Mars doubtful squint, and sighed. "Okay, not _just_ climbing."

"Better. Wait, I've heard of them. Not a law firm - accounting? How the hell do you branch out from being a CPA?"

Jackie raised her eyebrows, a little genuine pride sneaking into her smugness. "By convincing some crusty old suits that my last name and how cute my kid looks in a Little League uniform qualify me to take accounts with rookie baseball players?"

"You want to get between steroidal 18-year-olds and their brand new money?"

"Between them and the shitty decisions that land them in a lifetime of debt, actually." For the first time, Jackie's voice was sharp, almost disgusted. "And between them and their steroids, when I can."

The banter, already a little unsteady on its legs, collapsed entirely. Ever since she'd come to New York, Veronica had been allowing--encouraging--law school to callous over the part of her that once sat at the front desk of Mars Investigations and got angry over every case that was twisted out of their hands. She had decided it was a matter of survival, her own and her dad's, not to be so raw. But now - she thought of Jackie's father, defiant and skilled at a close home game, then slumped and small in a hospital bed; thought of Jackie on the dunk tank, an echo of both those moments in her perfect posture as she stared down the crowd.

Veronica had seen the obituary, after Terrence Cook's car slid off a bridge two years ago. It was reticent in the way the press could only be after death, and carefully elided the question of suicide. Jackie had had plenty to be raw about, or to close herself off from, if she'd chosen. But maybe she'd found some other option.

It was time to move this conversation to safer ground. "Where'd you go to school, anyway?"

Jackie tapped her nails against the recycling logo on the coffee cup, slid one absently along the paper seam. "Actually, the casino sent me to NYU - here, sorry, take a napkin."

Veronica mopped up the ice water her surprised jerk had spilled across the table, and tried to process what she'd just heard. "The casino that your dad, uh, worked for?"

Jackie laughed, somewhere between bitter and satisfied, and said, "What can I say? Their children-of-employees scholarship program didn't have an exception for people blackmailed into the job."

 _Huh._ "You know," Veronica said slowly, "I didn't get much contact with Leonard Lobo, but that guy seemed exactly the type to deny someone's education over a grudge."

Jackie met her eyes, not smiling but not hostile, either. Her face was just...still. She said thoughtfully, "People can surprise you. Duncan Kane engineering a kidnapping, for instance, that always seemed out of character. Singlehandedly outwit the FBI? Who knew he had it in him?"

Oh, _there_ was the rush she had walked away from before it could destroy her. She smirked happily at Jackie, who looked a little taken aback at the transformation. "Now that we understand each other,” Veronica murmured, then paused as Jackie tensed again. She gave it a minute, well aware she was being an asshole. "Want to get drunk and plot world takeover?"

Jackie returned the smirk, relaxing. "Sam's at my mom's for the weekend and I could use a break, actually. I'm in."

****

The bartender slid their third round showily down the bar and Veronica snatched Jackie's first, as much to hear her huff of indignation as to see if the drink tasted as pink as it looked. It tasted _pinker_ , which was mystifying. A total mystery.Someone should investigate.

"We should investigate," she declared.

Jackie tilted her head a little, still making Olympic rings with the condensation on Veronica's (fluorescently yellow, as God intended) margarita on the bar. "We would be good at it."

"Mars and Cook, Investigations," Veronica said slowly, savoring it. There was a wet thunk as Jackie dropped the glass.

"You're delusional," she snapped. "What did you do, crack your head on the last bathroom break? _Mars_ and _Cook_?"

This was better, this was solid ground. Veronica didn't even resent the crack about her - completely justified! due to terrible design, they could _sue_ \- graceless stumble down the steps to the bar restroom, so delicious was Jackie's indignation.

She pressed the pink drink solicitously back into Jackie's hands, saying, "It's not personal, obviously, it's just marketing. Studies show that brands ending on a hard consonant - "

"If you've had enough time for pseudo-sociology classes you probably aren't working hard enough on that law degree - "

"You're going to spill if you keep clenching the cup that-"

"Not personal my ass, _Mars and Cook_. You're not going anywhere near the business cards."

"I'll be drawing up the legal paperwork, of course,"

"I'll be notarizing everything, you won't stand a..."

The bartender was staring at them. Jackie's voice was rising, with a hint of showmanship in her rant that made Veronica want to collapse giggling against the bar. She lifted her drink in salute, instead, and waited for the next pause for breath before she said, "I'm glad you came in today."

Cut off, Jackie sighed heavily and spun on her barstool, trying to hide a smile. "Me, too."

 


End file.
